If you don’t know what happens at the end of Titanic, here’s your spoiler warning — the ship sinks and Jack and Rose are set out adrift at sea, holding onto a floating door as their only means of survival. After letting Rose float on the door, Jack dies while submerged in the freezing water.
Since the movie came out in 1997, fans have come up with dozens of theories on how Jack could have stayed alive, from alternating sharing the door to the two simply floating on it together. To add another option to the mix, three schoolgirls from Westminster School in Adelaide, Australia, used math to deduce that there was, in fact, a way for both Jack and Rose to have stayed alive.
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Abigail Wicks, Christy Zhang and Julia Damato used a formula to show how the couple could have survived if they had both put their life jackets under the door to keep it afloat. The girls presented their theory at the National Maths Talent Quest, winning an award for their findings.
“We looked at how buoyant the door would have been, and how that would have changed if there were people on top of that,” Wicks, 15, told The Daily Telegraph. “There was a lot of exploring and testing, and we had to fiddle with different buoyancies and look at what materials were realistic for that time.”
Damato added that they also factored in how the buoyancy would have been affected by the salt content of the water.
Photo Credit: Twentieth Century Fox
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NEW YORK CITY – DECEMBER 19: "Toil and Trouble" – Elsbeth is thrown into the world of television after the showrunner of a long-running police procedural is brutally murdered in his office, and although it appears to be the act of a disgruntled fan, she begins to suspect the show's longtime star Regina Coburn (Laurie Metcalf) who yearns for artistic fulfillment. Meanwhile, Judge Crawford (Michael Emerson) continues to be a thorn in Elsbeth's side, on the CBS original series ELSBETH, Thursday, Dec. 19 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs). Pictured (L-R): Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni and Carra Patterson as Kaya Blanke. (Photo by Michael Parmelee/CBS via Getty Images)
